"

"Dough is dough." The Bald-faced Kid stated this point in the manner
of one forestalling all argument. "At one time and another I've
handled quite a lot of it that I got different ways, but I never yet
had any trouble passing it off on folks, and they didn't hold their
noses when they took it either. Anything that'll spend is good money,
and don't you forget it!"

"But this girl, now--mebbe she won't think so."

"What she don't know won't hurt her."

"Son, what a woman don't know she guesses and feels, and she may have
the same sort of a feelin' that I've got--that some kinds of money
never bring anybody luck. A while ago you said this game was rotten,
and yet you're tryin' to cash in your stack and pick up all the
sleepers before you quit. Seems to me I'd want to start _clean_."

"Dough is dough, I tell you!" repeated the Kid stubbornly. He turned
and shook his fist at the distant betting ring where the cashiers
were paying off the last of the winning tickets. "Look out for me,
all of you sharks!" said the boy. "From now till the end of the
meeting it's packing-house rules, and everything goes!"

"'A wise son heareth his father's instruction,'" quoted Old Man
Curry.

"I hear you, old-timer," said the Kid, "but I don't get you. Next
thing I suppose you'll pull Solomon on me and tell me what he says
about tainted money!"

"I can do that too. Let's see, how does it go? Oh, yes. 'There is
that maketh himself rich, _yet hath nothing_; there is that maketh
himself poor, yet hath great riches.' That's Solomon on the money
question, my boy."

"Huh!" scoffed the unregenerate one. "Solomon was a king, wasn't he,
with dough to burn? It's mighty easy to talk--when you've got yours.
I haven't got mine yet, but you watch my smoke while I go after it!"

Old Man Curry trudged across the infield in the wake of the good
horse Elisha. Another owner, on the day of an important race, might
have been nervous or worried; the patriarch maintained his customary
calm; his head was bent at a reflective angle, and he nibbled at a
straw. Certain gentlemen, speculatively inclined, would have given
much more than a penny for the old man's thoughts; having bought them
at any price, they would have felt themselves defrauded.

Elisha, the star performer of the Curry stable, had been combed and
groomed and polished within an inch of his life, and there were blue
ribbons in his mane, a sure sign of the confidence of Shanghai, the
hostle